Hestia Software Measures Urban Carbon Dioxide Emissions

This short video describes the Hestia project - a software tool and data model that provide visualizations of localized CO2 emissions from residential, commercial, and vehicle levels, as well as day versus night comparisons, in the city of Indianapolis.

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Notes From Our Reviewers

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Teaching Tips

Teaching Tips

If doing a carbon footprint project in class, have students view the video after they have determined their own carbon footprint and then compare and contrast the two types of carbon footprints in terms of use, information conveyed, value etc.

This is a powerful tool to identify high-leverage actions to reduce emissions and to help urban planners and citizens understand the impact of their decisions and actions on CO2 emissions.

Sustainability Scientist Kevin Gurney and fellow researchers developed software models that measure specific greenhouse gas emissions at the city level. Named Hestia after the Greek goddess of the hearth and home, the program uses data from local cities to measure and pinpoint emissions from specific urban infrastructures like individual buildings and roads. This video explains the measuring process step-by-step and compares emissions in Indianapolis during certain times of the day.

Comments from expert scientist: The video has a good general introduction to CO2 being a greenhouse gas and what its dominant sources are in an urban center. Visual representation of the CO2 emissions and its diurnal cycle are very clear and instructive. One concern about the video is the validity of the representations in a few years. It was not clear from the video how often the data input is updated.

About the Pedagogy

The graphic display of carbon emissions is very effective at demonstrating the different sources of carbon, and their relative intensity, over the span of one day.